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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2022
Submitted to Contest #170
“I’ve got a plan,” Tim told his wife, leaning forward with elbows on the table, “but you’re not gonna like it.” Hell, he himself didn’t like it. But, if they and, more importantly, their baby girl, stayed on the cliff’s edge any longer, the next breeze would blow them over. Anastasia rubbed her upper arms. “I can’t imagine how it could be worse than losing the house.” Fortunately, the layoffs that had imposed this t...
Twenty-four hours, on the dot, after he’d last seen his daughter, he entered the office of Detective Aaron Grant. He fell rather than lowered himself into one of the burgundy burlap-upholstered chairs before the bulky cherry desk. His stomach knotted, and he dug his nails into the arms of his chair; the only way he could think of to keep himself from bolting. * * * &...
Submitted to Contest #169
A black cat scurried across Paige’s path. Paige groaned; the last thing she needed now was more bad luck. As the feline pranced toward the backyard, she stared at the house, a Victorian in which she would, at the very least, find her efforts futile. Most likely, she would end up also incurring the wrath of a woman who terrified the brave just as thoroughly as she did the cowardly. Paige could not hear Twila’s na...
Lightning struck, momentarily illuminating the graveyard before them, but, just as quickly, darkness swallowed it again. Rain pattered on Annabelle’s raincoat and mingled with the sweat on her palms. In one, she held two shovels; in the other, a flashlight that provided only a narrow strip of amber haze about three yards long. Did she really want to do this? she asked herself. She could not excuse what her brother had done, and she had always thought that, if it came to this, ...
Submitted to Contest #168
Karina leaned against her window, the cool glass refreshing amid the heat building inside her; watched the elms lining the sidewalks whip by; and contemplated a jump out her door at forty miles per hour. Surely, it would prove less painful than what otherwise awaited her. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t do it again—that she would take whatever Elle dished out. She had gotten through the morning, but then Elle, surrounded by her omnipresent cloud of minions, had bumped into her in the lunch line, spilling chocolate milk all over t...
Forty people, the news anchor announced, had died in the bombing of an apartment complex less than five miles away. Bryanna had passed the building countless times when going to the grocery store. The bank. The hair salon. The office, when she still had an office. Her coworker, Virginia, had lived in the complex. Loved dogs. Hated scary movies. Baked cookies with candy cane-shaped sprinkles and butter cream icing for Bryanna and her colleagues every Christmas Eve. Had she peri...
Submitted to Contest #167
After her father dropped back into his coffin, Theta’s shoulders, relieved of the burden they’d carried for far too long, rose. She sprang forward and flung her arms around Aidan; warmth flooded him. He reciprocated, stroking her long, silky curls, inhaling her aloe scent. When, finally, they parted, she broke into a grin that made her even more beautiful. He had always wanted to see her smile like that. The groan of ...
She awoke in a dungeon of her own creation. The physical manifestation of her mind: a semi-circular room offering dust-gray walls, ebony doors, black marble floors, and an ebony table and chairs. This was her first time seeing it—but not her first time trapped here. She had expected no better. Her surroundings represented a life fragmented by memory lapses, blank spots that she struggled to explain to puzzled coworker...
Submitted to Contest #166
Though Collin got to the chintzy restaurant half an hour after the party’s start time, he found its honoree, a man whom he’d never seen arrive a second late for anything throughout their twenty-five year friendship, absent. Just in case he’d missed him, he, again, surveyed the room—a banner screaming, “Happy Retirement!” draped across the ceiling, streamers taped to bisque-colored walls, and coworkers clustered around scratched walnut tables, chatting as they sucked cheddar chunks off toothpicks and sipped...
“I quit!” she declared, scooting forward on Destry’s stiff suede couch. She hadn’t planned to say it—not today, at least. She’d thought that she could endure a little more rejection, a little more wasted effort. But she’d done everything she could think to do: She’d taken Kyleigh to restaurants. The mall. The movies (even though sitting for two straight hours in the dark was not her idea of a good time). She’d asked her abo...
Submitted to Contest #165
Hugging herself despite the balmy temperature, Kristal stood by the gnarled hunk of metal wrapped around a leaning telephone pole that had, only an hour before, been her brand-new Toyota. Her third car wreck in two weeks, through no fault of her own. Like those of its others, its revelation, made via phone call, had eviscerated Hannah. The feeling hadn’t ceased even when Kristal had told her that she was okay (physically, at least). Instead, reflexively, she’d asked herself how Devin would react to this. Snapshot memories—red blotches creep...
“It was me,” he said, shifting from foot to foot in attempt to look guilty. Karen sent him a glare fit for one who had caused several deaths, which made sense, since that was exactly what he’d claimed to have done. He had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this—that Karen would never know that the twister had resulted from the sins of someone under her own roof. He’d thought that likely; after all, he and Tristin weren’t ...
Submitted to Contest #164
Passing the “Welcome to Gerald Heights” sign—antiquated green script on wood painted the color of yellowing paper—she broke the vow she’d made ten years ago to never set foot in this town again. She hoped that the residents had forgotten what had happened then but knew that they hadn’t. Towns like Gerald Heights remembered every retort one blurted, every sharp glare one sent, every snort one made while laughing, every sliver of spinach that had ever peeked out from between one’s teeth whe...
“Where I come from, we don’t take kindly to being abducted,” she snapped, glaring at her captors, two beings that resembled humans in shape only. Black spots dotted their pale pink skin—it reminded her of the wings of those lantern flies that the media had recently become so worried about. One of the beings had black eyes; the other, jungle-green. Both sets glared at her as if she’d killed their best friends. She probably shouldn’t have made that remark, she told herself. She had already angered them by landing on their planet. Not that she...
Submitted to Contest #163
CW: physical violence, suicide Juror Number 1 rose, ready to deliver the verdict I’d waited for for a year but suddenly didn’t want to hear. Beside me on a bench that seemed to have sprouted thorns, Adrien patted my shoulder as if to reassure me a final time that what I needed would happen—that the monster who had stolen my little girl would face as much punishment as the system had to offer. I could see why he thought so. As he’d told the support group through which we’d met a ye...
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